Google fires employees who protested Israel contract

Google fired 28 employees Wednesday who protested the tech giant’s cloud computing contract with the Israeli government.

Protesters staged sit-ins Tuesday at two Google offices — New York City and Sunnyvale, Calif. — in protest of the $1.2 billion contract that the company shares with Amazon to provide cloud computing services to Israel. Nine people were arrested.

“A small number of employee protesters entered and disrupted a few of our locations,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement. “Physically impeding other employees’ work and preventing them from accessing our facilities is a clear violation of our policies, and completely unacceptable behavior.”

“After refusing multiple requests to leave the premises, law enforcement was engaged to remove them to ensure office safety,” the statement continued. “We have so far concluded individual investigations that resulted in the termination of employment for 28 employees, and will continue to investigate and take action as needed.”

No Tech for Apartheid, the activist group that organized Tuesday’s protests, called the firings a “flagrant act of retaliation.”

“This evening, Google indiscriminately fired over two dozen workers, including those among us who did not directly participate in yesterday’s historic, bicoastal 10-hour sit-in protests,” the group said in a statement Wednesday.

“This flagrant act of retaliation is a clear indication that Google values its $1.2 billion contract with the genocidal Israeli government and military more than its own workers,” it added.

The contract, known as Project Nimbus, has faced backlash from workers and activists since it was initially signed in 2021. However, objections to the cloud computing agreement have escalated amid Israel’s ongoing military campaign in Gaza in response to Hamas’s Oct. 7 surprise attack.

Google emphasized Wednesday that it “supports numerous governments around the world” with its cloud computing services and that its work with the Israeli government “is not directed at highly sensitive, classified, or military workloads relevant to weapons or intelligence services.”

“We have been very clear that the Nimbus contract is for workloads running on our commercial cloud by Israeli government ministries, who agree to comply with our Terms of Service and Acceptable Use Policy,” the Google spokesperson said.

However, Time reported last week that Google is providing cloud computing services to the Israeli Ministry of Defense.